My House of Horrors

At 10 pm, Chen Ge arrived at the block where Doctor Gao’s family stayed. Looking up, he saw one of the windows had their light on, like all the lights in the home had been switched on. Should be that room.

The windows were closed, and there was a woman standing behind the curtain. She looked nervous and kept opening the curtains to look downstairs. “Gao Ru Xue?”

The girl also saw Chen Ge, but she did not show joy or surprise but a face filled with fear like she just saw something scary.

Looks like she’s still under the phone spirit’s influence.

When someone reached the threshold of fear, they would faint—that was the human body’s inherent protective system. However, the fear created by the phone spirit was different. The fear came in levels to slowly tormented the victim, pushing them slowly toward the edge of mental breakdown. Under such circumstances, the victim might be pushed to do something extremely irrational.

“Don’t do anything stupid!” Chen Ge rushed into the corridor and pushed on the elevator button, but the elevator stopped at the 13th floor and refused to budge. Given no other choice, he had to use the stairs. After completing so many missions, compared to logic and bravery, the biggest improvement to his body was his physical condition.

He activated the recorder and grabbed the hammer. He was not afraid of disturbing the other tenants and charged upstairs.

He moved fast!

The voice-activated light came on for each floor as Chen Ge ran to the 13th floor. There was only one anti-theft door that was open on the quiet corridor. “Found it!”

Chen Ge rushed to the door and called Gao Ru Xue’s name. There was no reply coming from within, but he heard Gao Ru Xue’s moan of pain and something being smashed. The girl that was normally calm and collected was like a madwoman. Chen Ge did not dare waste any more time. He used the hammer to smash the inner door open.

The blood vessels on the groove moved, and Chen Ge had no idea how many times he smashed at the door before the lock was smashed away. Chen Ge rushed into the room, and the first thing he saw was Gao Ru Xue leaning out the window.

The scarier thing was that there was a very thin boy sitting on Gao Ru Xue’s head. He hugged her head and used his body to cover her ears, his hands clamped over her eyes.

“Xu Yin!” Chen Ge’s shout echoed through many floors, and all the light in the room was extinguished in that moment. Air seemed to freeze as a bloody shadow charged at Gao Ru Xue!

The boy on top of Gao Ru Xue’s head showed extreme fear when he saw Xu Yin and released his grasp without hesitation and disappeared. Gao Ru Xue, who returned normal, had not recovered when he saw a Red Specter with blood dripping charging at her. She wanted to scream, but there was no voice in her throat. Her arms weakened, and her body fell backward.

“Hold onto me!” The familiar voice appeared again. Gao Ru Xue’s pupils started to focus. The red banshee that she had seen earlier had disappeared, and only Chen Ge was grabbing her arm. The lights went off, and staring at the man in the dark, Gao Ru Xue’s mind started to collect its thought.

With one leg on the windowsill, Chen Ge tried his best to pull Gao Ru Xue up. Looking at the shocked Gao Ru Xue, Chen Ge’s heart was also racing. “Thankfully, the outside door was left open. If that door was locked, I wouldn’t have been able to get in so quickly.”

Collapsing to the ground, Chen Ge was still worried about Gao Ru Xue. He dragged her to the sofa. “You’re fine now. Get some rest, I’ll go call Doctor Gao.”

Ten minutes later, the lights in the room came on, and there were footsteps coming from the corridor. Chen Ge raised his head to see Doctor Gao, who looked different from his normal image. His usual confidence and maturity were gone. Gasping for air, his eyes were filled with concern.

“Xiao Xue.” Kneeling by the sofa, Doctor Gao grabbed Gao Ru Xue’s hands, and the girl finally showed her vulnerable side. Silently putting the hammer back into his backpack, Chen Ge picked up the phone that Gao Ru Xue had dropped and walked out the door alone.

It was not over yet. He had to get that phone spirit no matter what!

Specters that are not Red Specter cannot expose themselves too long outside in the world; they have to attach themselves to something. That phone spirit won’t have gotten far.

Chen Ge did not chase blindly. His mind was clear. When I entered building, the elevator did not budge from the thirteenth floor. At the time, the phone spirit was on Gao Ru Xue’s head, suppressing her senses, so the one inside the elevator has to be another person or a ghost.

Someone was controlling the phone spirit, and said person should have been the one stopping the elevator from moving.

If the plan was to lure Gao Ru Xue away, there was no need to do this because he has no reason to kill Gao Ru Xue. After the plan failed, the best solution is to escape—doing more than that will only expose himself. So, why did he change the plan to kill Gao Ru Xue?

There were many different answers in Chen Ge’s mind, but there was only one that was most possible—Gao Ru Xue had accidentally seen the killer. To not let any witnesses survive, the person changed his intention to kill Gao Ru Xue.

The person behind the phone spirit lured me out of New Century Park and then lured Gao Ru Xue home. The culprit should be from the ghost stories society. Chen Ge leaned against the wall and looked out the window. All the clues started to line up. After tonight, they should only be the only member left.

Chen Ge returned to the room and had Doctor Gao pull up the surveillance of the thirteenth floor. He squatted down beside the sofa and asked, after Doctor Gao left, “Did you run into anyone weird on the way home?”

“Weird people?” Gao Ru Xue thought about it. “The driver who drove me home was weird. He kept telling me about those murders.”

“Who else other than him?” Gao Ru Xue had been influenced by the phone spirit, so she would have thought the worst of everyone.

After some thought, Gao Ru Xue suddenly said, “When I wanted to take the elevator earlier, someone wearing an extra-large raincoat was leaving the elevator. I bumped into him.”

“Raincoat?” Chen Ge was interested. “Did you managed to see his face?”

“No, the person was completely hidden inside the raincoat.” Gao Ru Xue hesitated before saying, “After he left the elevator, for some reason, I felt fearful of the elevator. I was afraid I might get trapped inside, so I took the stairs, but when I reached the sixth floor, the safety door on the first floor was pushed open, and someone began to chase me.”